Why putting climate change on trial is a terrible idea

The US Chamber of Commerce is upset that the EPA has chosen to regulate CO2 …

Back in June, the US Chamber of Commerce, which represents business interests, filed a petition that asked the Environmental Protection Agency to revisit its decision, made in April, to treat greenhouse gasses as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The CoC requested open public hearings that would reexamine all aspects of the decision, from the science of climate change and ocean acidification to the projected impacts on public health and agriculture. Although there was nothing unusual or unexpected about that, the request appears to have been widely ignored. That seems to have ended, as the Chamber's real desire has become clear: it wants to subject climate science to a show trial.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that this language is exaggerated, but it's sadly not. In discussions with the Los Angeles Times, Chamber representatives explicitly reference the Scopes trial, held in Tennessee, which created a media circus focused on the first of many US legal actions over the teaching of evolution.

One of the complaints is that the EPA's decision is based in part on the IPCC's reports, which it considers a secondary, potentially biased source. Apparently immune to irony, the Chamber references the same IPCC report where it reaches conclusions favorable to the Chamber.

The Scopes trial should provide ample historic precedent that a public trial like this neither clarifies the science nor unites the public. But disagreements over science fundamentally don't lend themselves to resolution via public opinion, and the petition makes it clear that the Chamber itself is likely to mangle any attempts at clarity.

Separating policy from science

There are two aspects to the EPA's decision, science- and policy-based, and the Chamber's petition attacks them both. The potential to regulate greenhouse gasses as pollutants stretches back to the end of the Clinton administration, which left the issue to its successor. The Bush administration, while accepting the scientific indications that these substances can alter the climate, made policy decisions not to regulate them, taking a losing battle all the way to the Supreme Court, and then arguing that existing legislation was not up to the task. The Obama administration has chosen a different policy, choosing to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gasses.

Distilled down, the Chamber's argument on policy grounds is that the Bush administration had it right: handling this within the frameworks provided by existing legislation will be difficult, if not impossible.

There are some reasonable arguments to be made, as issues like ocean acidification and sea level rises will be difficult to approach within a simple regulatory framework, as they have implications for everything from the fishing industry to disaster management. At the same time, however, the administration's quick handling of automotive fuel economy standards (which occurred prior to the Chamber's petition) indicated that not everything was impossible at the policy level.

Attacking the science

In any case, it's easy to argue that the policy debate was settled by Obama's election. Since the Bush administration seems to have largely accepted the same science as the current EPA, that should handle both prongs of the argument. Except it doesn't, at least in the Chamber's view. It correctly highlights that there are relevant areas where future projections of climate change have significant uncertainties, such as urban air quality and agricultural productivity. But the document also attacks some of the basic data behind climate change, suggesting that we aren't actually sure that the oceans' pH is dropping, or that the seas and temperatures are rising.

One of the complaints is that the EPA's decision is based in part on the IPCC's reports, which it considers a secondary, potentially biased source. Apparently immune to irony, the Chamber references the same IPCC report where it reaches conclusions favorable to the Chamber, and uses some of its own secondary sources, including reports by a someone who appears to have ties to a pro-coal lobbying group.

But it also relies on interpretations of scientific publications that the authors of said publications have explicitly disavowed, and raises arguments based on private websites that have staked a position in the climate debate. It would be tempting to think that if these guys got involved in a public trial of the science, they'd be in trouble, and the public would recognize it. Tempting, but probably wrong.

The one-way hash argument

The simple and wrong arguments take one sentence each; the detailed-but-correct one takes three paragraphs—and still required a lot of simplifications

The Chamber is explicitly looking to put climate science on trial, quoting a court ruling that states, "cross-examination has always been considered a most effective way to ascertain truth," and saying they're looking to produce "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century." It's hard to imagine an outcome that could be worse. Decades later, we're still having court cases focused on the teaching of evolution, the losers are still trying to get their ideas into classrooms, and the public still has little idea of the scientific status of evolution.

One reason for this is that a cross examination is a lousy way to determine science, because all scientific conclusions are tentative and limited in various ways; there are always holes waiting to be picked at. But the other reason is that a trial situation is a great opportunity for people to confuse the public with what our former colleague Julian Sanchez termed a one-way hash argument.

The gist of this is that it can easy to make a simple, intuitive presentation of an argument that is simply wrong. In contrast, reality is often complex and counterintuitive, and providing all the details needed to understand it can be arduous. It's the difference between multiplying two prime numbers to encrypt something, and figuring out which prime numbers are needed to decrypt it.

To give an example from the climate debate, take the graph shown above, which follows both carbon dioxide levels and temperatures through several glacial cycles. A pro-climate change, one-way hash argument would note that the two always change in synchrony, hence CO2-driven climate change. The anti- equivalent would note that, if you look carefully, the temperatures start to rise ahead of the CO2 at the end of a glacial cycle, hence greenhouse gasses have nothing to do with it.

As it turns out, both the intuitive arguments are wrong. The regular glacial cycles are triggered by equally regular wobbles in the Earth's axis relative to the plane of its orbit. Although these wobbles, called Milankovitch cycles, don't change the total amount of sunlight hitting the Earth, they do change its distribution. That alone is enough to cause regional climate change, but not enough to drop the global temperature by several degrees.

That happens because the Milankovitch cycles set off feedback mechanisms that enhance their effect. Ice expands near the poles and reflects more sunlight back into space, for example. And, separately, atmospheric CO2 levels start to drop, which accentuates the drop in temperatures. To exit the glacial cycle, both processes need to reverse; changes in the distribution of sunlight can start to change the planet, but we wouldn't reach the temperatures we're currently enjoying in this interglacial if it weren't accompanied by feedbacks, including elevated greenhouse gas levels.

So, the simple and wrong arguments take one sentence each; the detailed-but-correct one takes three paragraphs—and still required a lot of simplifications. The details generally support the scientific understanding that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations can force the climate, but certainly don't do so in a straightforward manner.

An all-around bad idea

It's one thing for the Chamber to try to reopen a policy debate that has been kicked around for close to a decade and made its way all the way to the Supreme Court; it's a lobbying group, and that's more or less its job. But to suggest that a courtroom setting and media frenzy are the best way to bring some clarity to the science is ludicrous. The sort of arguments that make for good courtroom statements tend to obscure the details of science, and the specific example proposed by the Chamber clearly indicates that they do nothing for the public's understanding of science.

Of course, it may be possible that the group really is that cynical, and this is precisely the outcome it is hoping for.

281 Reader Comments

"The sort of arguments that make for good courtroom statements tend to obscure the details of science, and the specific example proposed by the Chamber clearly indicates that they do nothing for the public's understanding of science.

Of course, it may be possible that the group really is that cynical, and this is precisely the outcome it is hoping for. "

JT, I know you are trying to be even-handed but, come on, that's exactly what they are hoping for. They can't win on science; so they'll resort to demagoguery. Hell, they probably don't even understand the science. All they can see is higher prices and reduced profit; the rest of the world be damned. Regardless of what side of the debate anyone is on if you think this is a good idea, then you don't really believe in science.

There's enough science being ignored to completely debunk AGW, this is why we are being forced into believing that it exists, and why all the proponents of this falsehood refuse to debate it, they can't justify what they claim is happening.

Letting things be, accepting that as we have done nothing, temperatures are actually cooling, is in all honesty the best policy

Originally posted by z0phi3l:There's enough science being ignored to completely debunk AGW, this is why we are being forced into believing that it exists, and why all the proponents of this falsehood refuse to debate it, they can't justify what they claim is happening.

Letting things be, accepting that as we have done nothing, temperatures are actually cooling, is in all honesty the best policy

The data is clear. We humans have been polluting much longer that we can even remember. Seems that we were polluting and wiping ourselves out about every 100000 years or so. I mean why else woud the temp and CO2 go up? It has to be us right?

Originally posted by SonicHgHog:The data is clear. We humans have been polluting much longer that we can even remember. Seems that we were polluting and wiping ourselves out about every 100000 years or so. I mean why else woud the temp and CO2 go up? It has to be us right?

if you have a chance to prevent a global catastrophe, does it really matter whether or not you are the one causing that catastrophe?

Originally posted by SonicHgHog:The data is clear. We humans have been polluting much longer that we can even remember. Seems that we were polluting and wiping ourselves out about every 100000 years or so. I mean why else woud the temp and CO2 go up? It has to be us right?

Really, are people so incapable of basic logic that we have to point out how bad this argument is in every climate thread?

It is possible for a single phenomenon to have both natural and human-driven causes. Think about it for a moment - i'm sure you can come up with dozens of examples without breaking a sweat.

How many people here that feel the need to comment on AGW actually have *any* kind of scientific training?

How many people here that claim the literature has it decided actually have read the literature, other than a couple of links off a blog?

Let me tell you what I know about my field, which is rather uncontroversial and that hasn't become a political issue. The peer-reviewed literature is often wrong. Especially the more exciting the research is, it's more likely the author screwed up somewhere along the road and that's why it's so exciting. I can't imagine heavily politicizing the issue would lessen this problem.

So how do scientists get around that? SKEPTICISM. Alternative viewpoints. Yes, it's not comforting to the average person, who wants answers immediately. It's especially uncomforting to the people who want to turn it into a political issue. But it's how science works. Science is a slow process. Data which seems to be a slam dunk in support of a theory can later turn out to be either faulty, or there was a third alternative that you never even considered in the first place. This is especially true when one is dealing mostly with computer simulations, which are notoriously easy to rig in your favor in any discipline by minor tweaks to the parameters.

Am I saying that AGW doesn't exist? No. I'm neutral in the matter. I wish I could form an opinion, but there's so much disinformation coming from both sides that it's almost impossible for a casual observer. I'm just tired of this treatment of scientists as demigods who could *never* be wrong.

All this being said, the show trial approach is still wrong, for the reasons described. That it obscures the real science. But the claim that there is a "good side" and an "evil side" in any scientific field is bullshit. One of my professors said it best when they said that, paradoxically, a field is at its healthiest when multiple people in the field absolutely hate other people in the field and are constantly trying to decredit their work. Not when they're all agreeing with one another; that's when fields of study stagnate. You need competing theories for a field to thrive; yes, even theories that doubt AGW.

Originally posted by SonicHgHog:The data is clear. We humans have been polluting much longer that we can even remember. Seems that we were polluting and wiping ourselves out about every 100000 years or so. I mean why else woud the temp and CO2 go up? It has to be us right?

Really, are people so incapable of basic logic that we have to point out how bad this argument is in every climate thread?

It is possible for a single phenomenon to have both natural and human-driven causes. Think about it for a moment - i'm sure you can come up with dozens of examples without breaking a sweat.

Originally posted by z0phi3l:There's enough science being ignored to completely debunk AGW, this is why we are being forced into believing that it exists, and why all the proponents of this falsehood refuse to debate it, they can't justify what they claim is happening.

Letting things be, accepting that as we have done nothing, temperatures are actually cooling, is in all honesty the best policy

I see, so your theory is that there is lots of legitimate, peer reviewed science that disproves AGW, but no one, including the doubters, is bothering to bring it forward. Interesting theory.

I have a similar belief in overwhelming but ignored science supporting the existence of elves.

Originally posted by z0phi3l:There's enough science being ignored to completely debunk AGW, this is why we are being forced into believing that it exists, and why all the proponents of this falsehood refuse to debate it, they can't justify what they claim is happening.

Letting things be, accepting that as we have done nothing, temperatures are actually cooling, is in all honesty the best policy

"Really, are people so incapable of basic logic that we have to point out how bad this argument is in every climate thread?

It is possible for a single phenomenon to have both natural and human-driven causes. Think about it for a moment - i'm sure you can come up with dozens of examples without breaking a sweat."

Your absolutely correct. We need to ingore what happend in the past, since this time we have causing the issue. Forget about all those cycles in the past. Since WE are here now, we have to be causing it somehow.

"That seems to have ended, as the Chamber's real desire has become clear: it wants to subject climate science to a show trial."

If you want to regulate CO2 emission through laws, you have to be able to justify the application of those laws in court. Either there is a real scientific justification why those laws should apply or there is not.

Originally posted by SonicHgHog:The data is clear. We humans have been polluting much longer that we can even remember. Seems that we were polluting and wiping ourselves out about every 100000 years or so. I mean why else woud the temp and CO2 go up? It has to be us right?

Really, are people so incapable of basic logic that we have to point out how bad this argument is in every climate thread?

It is possible for a single phenomenon to have both natural and human-driven causes. Think about it for a moment - i'm sure you can come up with dozens of examples without breaking a sweat.

Thank you.

I hate that all the human haters of the world want to say that all climate change is a direct result of human pollution...

The world's climate has changed drastically for millions (supposedly) of years, why all of a sudden is it OUR doing?

Originally posted by dnjake:"That seems to have ended, as the Chamber's real desire has become clear: it wants to subject climate science to a show trial."

If you want to regulate CO2 emission through laws, you have to be able to justify the application of those laws in court. Either there is a real scientific justification why those laws should apply or there is not.

Did you miss the bit about where the issue has already been to the Supreme Court?

Putting scientific facts on trial is absurd. The OJ Simpson trial popularized the concept that a jury has more authority than science.

Science doesn't work in the courtroom, plain and simple. If our government wishes to advance society there really needs to be a completely separate legal system for formulating policy based on scientific needs.

A possible solution is to NOT elect any lawyer to office ever again. The public who votes to have lawyers legislate for them is giving the fox the job of guarding the chicken coop.

Originally posted by SonicHgHog:"Really, are people so incapable of basic logic that we have to point out how bad this argument is in every climate thread?

It is possible for a single phenomenon to have both natural and human-driven causes. Think about it for a moment - i'm sure you can come up with dozens of examples without breaking a sweat."

Your absolutely correct. We need to ingore what happend in the past, since this time we have causing the issue. Forget about all those cycles in the past. Since WE are here now, we have to be causing it somehow.

Nobody's forgetting the cycles in the past; as noted, they indicate that CO2 can force the climate. Which, in fact is why everyone's concerned about the human emissions of CO2. Are you arguing that, because humans put it there instead of nature, it's going to magically have some different effect?

I, for one believe in Global Warming. Even if you don't, what's the harm in trying to preserve the environment? Don't you still want rainforests and polar bears and penguins and pandas and fish to still be around for our grandchildren? Regardless of Global Warming, resources are becoming more scarce. How are we going to provide for our 6 billion and growing population? What are we going to do when we have 10 billion people? Why do people in power want to put off important issues until its nearly too late to fix? And most importantly, why are people so ignorant?

I tend to approach all issues with a scientific mind-set. However, there are serious questions about global warming that a rational person cannot and should not easily dismiss. I definitely don't believe Al Gore's exaggerated disaster flick. I also am also skeptical about the data and conclusions presented by the IPCC.

I am particularly concerned about the faith placed in long-term climate change computer models. I don't see any reason to believe that those models are any more reliable than the models used to forecast weather or evaluate risk in financial markets--and those models have proven remarkably unreliable. Perhaps some systems are just too complex for reliable modeling.

In the case of global warming, it seems quite clear that at least some of the "experts" have been biased. Perhaps they exaggerate to help convince us of a growing danger. Or, perhaps they exaggerate to increase funding for their own research. I don't know for sure. But I've seen enough discrepancies and read enough serious alternative viewpoints to no longer have confidence that the global warming "experts" A) know what is happening and B) are presenting an unbiased view of the situation.

I don't know if this "Scopes trial" approach is the best approach, but I do believe that it would be good to have a serious, meaningful discussion of global warming that is based on facts, not hysteria and pre-conceived notions.

Originally posted by SonicHgHog:"Really, are people so incapable of basic logic that we have to point out how bad this argument is in every climate thread?

It is possible for a single phenomenon to have both natural and human-driven causes. Think about it for a moment - i'm sure you can come up with dozens of examples without breaking a sweat."

Your absolutely correct. We need to ingore what happend in the past, since this time we have causing the issue. Forget about all those cycles in the past. Since WE are here now, we have to be causing it somehow.

Ok, enough with the false dichotomy BS. Seriously. It's not an either/or situation.

Is the average global temperature increasing? Yes. No sane person would argue this point.

Are carbon levels increasing and are we the cause of at least some of it? Yes.

Does an increase in carbon levels cause an increase in temperature. Almost certainly.

Now we get to the interesting questions.

How much carbon are we contributing? We have a decent estimate and it is significant but we can't know exactly unless we hook up a meter to every source of carbon emissions.

How much of an effect does our contribution make to climate change? Less certain. I haven't seen an estimate for the equilibrium point or how much our contribution perturbs the system.

Could this just be a natural increase in carbon and temperature? Sure but without a doubt to a greater or lesser degree we are making it worse.

If the temperature rise is inevitable shouldn't we be spending more on mitigation than prevention? Good question.

I'm all for debating the minutiae of theory and experiment but sometimes you have to sum up what you know in order to turn it into policy.

Originally posted by thenino85:Am I saying that AGW doesn't exist? No. I'm neutral in the matter. I wish I could form an opinion, but there's so much disinformation coming from both sides that it's almost impossible for a casual observer. I'm just tired of this treatment of scientists as demigods who could *never* be wrong.

Thanks for muddying the issue even more. You're worse than the Chamber of Commerce.

In the loosest sense, sure there's disinformation on "both sides" -- that is if you're willing to lump eco-hippies in with NASA. In reality they have nothing to do with one another. Surely you've noticed one has satellites and scientists and the other has people in hemp marching around with signs?

Plus, who has ever said scientists are "never wrong"? Sure they can be. But after decades of building up data from satellites, land temperature, oceans, glaciers, arctic ice, plant life, and more... it all points in the same direction. At this point the mistakes are on the level of which very specific physical mechanism determines meltwater flow and ice breakage, how much mixing occurs at each level of ocean water, etc -- NOT whether humans have caused the planet to warm beyond the bounds of straight solar input.

The author of this piece really needs to do more research. Ron Paul just submitted a brief to Congress on the issue with 30,000+ names on it, all climatologists and of which 9000+ of those are PhDs in the field and ALL of them say that there is no such thing as global warming caused by man-made increases in C02. These are scientists saying that there is no correlation. (a good chunk of them were actually sighted on the UN study on the subject as supporting global warming despite telling the UN study that they would not sign anything of the sort and a chunk of them are suing the UN for using their names)

When asked by Australian officials to provide evidence of global warming and show their methodologies for testing the Whitehouse refused. (i.e. they don't have real scientific data)

The graph provided by the EPA above is false on its face. Zoom in to the last 100 years on that graph and you will see no correlation AT ALL between an increase in man-made co2 and temperature increases. There is no possible data that shows any correlation of the sort. Human beings produce at most 2% of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere even today and that number, even if the entire world released CO2 like the United States could never be more than 5%. The <b>fluctuations<b> in CO2 due to forest fires and Volcanoes every year is 40% higher than the total amount of CO2 released by humans. Even if we stopped immediately today all CO2 releases the fluctuations in temp would continue because the vast majority of CO2 release has nothing to do with humans.

In the 1910s-1930s there was many cries that Global Warming was going to kill us all (they didn't know why). Then the 40s happened and the temperature went down, and there were cries that we were going back into an ice age. Then the eighties came along and we're in global warming... then the 2000s have come along and we're right back to 1979 temperature norms when the data was first collected with no evidence of global warming at all. But then the Global Warming alarmists now tell us that global cooling is actually proof of global warming! We keep blaming man for causing what is a normal cycle with billions of variables. We are just one of them. It is irrational and egotistical to think that we're the cause.

Which brings us to the funniest part of all: Of the top 36 most agreed upon theories with projections from the 1990s of temperature increases due to man-made global warming all but one have been categorically proven FALSE and the one that wasn't was a study of ocean temperatures with predictions, however their data didn't handle the delay in temperature change of the oceans caused by the huge amount of it, and didn't account for El Nino or other similar effects, thus the data is useless and they happened to be within factor of 10 of what happened, but it was complete luck.

The thermometers in use today at ground stations' margin for error on temperature readings are larger than the change in temperature over the last 120 years. Do you think that the ones in 1880 were very accurate either?

Those same thermometers when a random survey of stations was done in the United States were found in 80+% of situations to be completely unreliable (i.e. a station weighted as highly accurate and reliable was actually laying on the ground, another in the same category was in pavement with the conducting wire running across the blacktop absorbing heat, and still another was right beside the exhaust vent of an air conditioner... and then more than half of them are in urban zones which are known to raise temperatures by 1.3C or more thus skewing the results... not conincidently by about the same amount that they suggest the temperature has increased)

Using the only accurate measurements of temperature that we have, satellites in orbit (and there is lots of debate on that) there has been no temperature change at all since they started measuring it. (but there have been lots of fluctuations)

The causality of CO2 to increases in ice melt is backwards. Ice melt releases CO2 into the atmosphere, not the other way around (as indirectly noted in the article)

We are just now reaching the average temperature over the recorded history of humanity. This is not hot, this is AVERAGE. 1880 was still in a mini ice age. IN 1864 the themes river in London froze over for the first time since the Romans started recording it. They were terrified that the English Channel was going to do the same (it almost did) and thus the massive French army would be able to attack Brittan directly without going through the massive British Navy to get there would have upset the balance of power. The reports in 1880 is that while the Themes didn't freeze, the temperatures were similarly low compared to 1864.

Every planet in the solar system has had it's temperature increased proportionately to the distance from the sun. A 12 year old proved this in her science fair using NASA data. It shows that our temperature increases and fluctuations are within the margin for error of even orbit based measurement accuracy with that of other planets. This means that the increase and decrease is almost directly related to solar activity.

The experiments are not controlled. Science requires that you follow scientific method. There is none here. There are statistics which IS NOT SCIENCE. All of their data is based on mathematical extrapolations of statistical models. There is no controlled measurements happening, there is no control of equipment being used, or methods for measurement. There is no control of the environment or the things affecting it at any given time. They are not creating control mini-environments to test this. This is junk science just like the drug companies do with exactly the same results. If you've ever heard the fine print on the drug ads on TV they all say something along the lines of "it is thought that this drug does this...". Meaning that they don't have a clue what it does. What they've done is a double blind test with a limited number of people and used statistics to guess what's going on and how it will affect people. Guess what? They're stunningly wrong. The FDA's own data shows that percapita drug release on the market to those taking it, the number of deaths and recalls due to harmful side effects has tripled since they started testing drugs. Meaning that the statistics are worse than just putting it out there and hoping for the best.

The same is true about global warming. They're wanting to see something, and instead of putting in the hard work to really understand what's going on, they're using statistics as a shortcut with predicable results.

Appropriately, the Scopes Monkey Trial pointed out the same BS when it comes to understanding he origins of the earth and of human beings. It pointed out that the Bible isn't science. It pointed out that Darwin and Evolution and the research done going forward from that point, is proven, fact checked, against real data and demonstrates a direct correlation in highly controlled environments and those translate directly to fossil records etc. Statistics is much like the bible. It makes for good reading but must be taken as fiction written by ignorant people trying to shortcut hard work, science and education.

The evil here is the use of Statistics instead of real science, but it is absolutely appropriate that this is put on trial (by scientists) and we test this. We're about to destroy 20% of our economy over night and raise huge taxes that didn't previously exist for a statistical model that his highly flawed and incomplete at best, and based on all of the contradictory evidence OUTRIGHT WRONG in all likelihood.

It is time to reopen the debate. Doubters have a reason for doubting, but as it stands right now, there is no serious debate in scientific circles going on and thus we can't possibly come to the truth, because Al Gore made a movie with cartoons of polar bears drowning in it (which isn't true, and the polar bear population is increasing thank you very much! That's why he had to use a cartoon...) everyone turned off their brain. (tip if you watch that movie, every time there is an animation, he's lying)

As for preventing a global catastrophe and the idiotic argument that it doesn't matter if we were the cause, you need to think carefully about that. First there is no evidence that there is anything unusual at all about the temperature changes that we routinely monitor. Second, if there is something happening, us messing around without knowning what's going on is going to make it worse, not better. The assumption that we can fix this without knowing even 5% of what we need to know about the earth's climate is huberous at best, and an ego-maniacle extinction level event most likely.

I implore you: Educate yourselves. Don't take the government's word for it. They're at the least ignorant and most likely wrong. Start asking questions, don't accept this data on faith. Don't take my word for it either, do the research, read the reports, get in the face of the people claiming to be right. Question their motives. (i.e. on of the UN's foremost climatologist admitted that they were exagerating and said that sometimes you have to lie to get people to do the right thing!) Question the "concensus" because it doesn't exist. Stop this madness before we destory our way of lives for NOTHING.

I think it is clear that doing absolutely nothing is not the solution - it seems highly unlikely that our impact on the climate is nothing. However, the present policy solutions represent a massive risk to the world economy. Money is not everything, but it does provide for food, shelter, medicine, etc. If we damage the economy of our country, we will have less of the other things as well. Not just the wealthy Americans, but everyone.

It also seems highly unlikely that we are the major impactor of the climate as well. It is increasingly clear that we don't understand many climate drivers. This uncertainty should also push us towards a more balanced approach to addressing climate change - an approach that is guided by both what is likely to be significant to the climate and what is reasonable economically, given that we need to eat.

I would also like to suggest that many of the claims on what is going to happen to us in the future are likely to be completely wrong, so basing policy off of those claims is a very poor choice. I do not work on climate modeling, but I have worked for years on modeling the combustion processes in an engine. That is a very small system, with very few external drivers, yet we still are not capable of predicting a priori how an engine will behave to a particular set of input conditions. The models (of any complexity you like) still need tuning to experimental results, and do not extrapolate well beyond the conditions they were tuned at. If we can't accurately simulate what a few grams of fuel and air are doing in a 500 cc closed space, there is no way we can accurately simulate what is happening to the entire solar-atmosphere-land-ocean system of the planet. So a little scepticism applied to the modeling results and how we should respond to them seems in order.

I'm still not sure that the present Chamber of Commerce approach is the right one, but at least it pushes back against using innacurate modeling to dictate massive global changes to our economy, health, and future.

I am completely sceptical of global warming or any of the so-called science related to climate change. And I don't think it is possible to prove something when we don't understand the causation part and can only point to correlations. That being said, as a practical matter the CO2 regulation makes lots of sense for the US. It will generally force less reliance on consumption of fuel to create energy and instead move us toward the use of solar, wind and other resources that the US has in abundance. Therefore, the regulation of CO2 has a rational policy basis and assuming the EPA has some scientific basis that is at least as plausible as the alternative, which is hard to argue doesn't exist, they get a pass.

The automotive industry has argued for years against increasing fuel economy (partly because people like powerful cars). But since there is a lack of political will to sufficiently tax fuel to make those vehicles less desirable, you have to approach it a different way (raise mileage standards). The same this is true with CO2 - the real reasons for wanting CO2 reductions are too long term and politically unattractive so you have to use reasons that are more politically acceptable. As long as we don't kid ourselves about this, I have no problem with the approach.

But I disagree about the trial, I think it would be a fun time and let the crackpots on both sides show how foolish they really are.

Originally posted by bullwinkle12:I, for one believe in Global Warming. Even if you don't, what's the harm in trying to preserve the environment? Don't you still want rainforests and polar bears and penguins and pandas and fish to still be around for our grandchildren? Regardless of Global Warming, resources are becoming more scarce. How are we going to provide for our 6 billion and growing population? What are we going to do when we have 10 billion people? Why do people in power want to put off important issues until its nearly too late to fix? And most importantly, why are people so ignorant?

I completly agree. I have no idea why some people are so interested in keeping the status quo in regards to CO2 emissions(unless you stand to make money from it). What are they trying to convince us of? That you would rather burn fossil fuels until they are all gone(which causes pollution regardless of what side of the climate change argument you are on) and the world goes through a massive energy crisis? Why not solve the problem now and be finished with it?

So we can either destroy the planet we are living on by raping all its natural resouces and abusing all that it has given us, or we can go back to how it was no earlier than 300 years ago where there wasnt really a river on the planet that coulnt be drunk from. Once we destory nature, the environment and the animals that live in it, they are not comming back. Or are you just trying to prove how selfish you are?

Originally posted by VIProgrammer:I am particularly concerned about the faith placed in long-term climate change computer models. I don't see any reason to believe that those models are any more reliable than the models used to forecast weather or evaluate risk in financial markets--and those models have proven remarkably unreliable.

Ever notice how we can easily measure temperature -- that is, the average kinetic energy of a system of molecules -- but separately measuring the velocities of 5 quintillion individual gas molecules is impossible? That's a rough analogy for why local weather prediction is terrible and climate models (which do smart averaging over wide regions and long durations) are not.

Oh, and you know what? Computerized climate models are NOT used as "evidence" for global warming -- they're built from genuine observation, just like any other sort of model. I'd think that was self-evident, but apparently people like you are still fucking it up.

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Or, perhaps they exaggerate to increase funding for their own research. I don't know for sure.

You clearly DON'T know. I've asked repeatedly, in multiple threads, for someone to show a paper trail on JUST HOW science funding organizations like NSF could be politicizing or corrupting climate research. I have yet to see a single "skeptic" account for one penny.

Originally posted by z0phi3l:There's enough science being ignored to completely debunk AGW, this is why we are being forced into believing that it exists, and why all the proponents of this falsehood refuse to debate it, they can't justify what they claim is happening.

Letting things be, accepting that as we have done nothing, temperatures are actually cooling, is in all honesty the best policy

Originally posted by divisionbyzero:Ok, enough with the false dichotomy BS. Seriously. It's not an either/or situation.

Is the average global temperature increasing? Yes. No sane person would argue this point.

I would. Because they're not. There is no temperature difference at all between 1979 to 2006. 1979 is the year that they started collecting data from sattilites.

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Originally posted by divisionbyzero:Are carbon levels increasing and are we the cause of at least some of it? Yes.

Does an increase in carbon levels cause an increase in temperature. Almost certainly.

While there may be a correlation, there is absolutely NO CORRELATION BETWEEN THE MINUTE AMOUNT OF CO2 RELEASED BY HUMAN BEINGS AND TEMPERATURE INCREASE. The governments' own data proves it and that's why they always release graphs like above that hide the human factor because their own graph demonstrates that they're lying to you.

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Originally posted by divisionbyzero:How much carbon are we contributing? We have a decent estimate and it is significant but we can't know exactly unless we hook up a meter to every source of carbon emissions.

It isn't significant. The fluctuations of nature causes on a year to year basis is 40% more than all of the CO2 released by humans.

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Originally posted by divisionbyzero:How much of an effect does our contribution make to climate change? Less certain. I haven't seen an estimate for the equilibrium point or how much our contribution perturbs the system.

Completely certain. There is absolutely no correlation at all.

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Originally posted by divisionbyzero:Could this just be a natural increase in carbon and temperature? Sure but without a doubt to a greater or lesser degree we are making it worse.

There is no evidence that the temperature increase is due to CO2. There is lots of evidence that the temperature increase is due to increased solar activity. Hence the assumption that the temperature increase is due to CO2 is part of the problem. You're assuming a cause that has no evidence to suggest that it is the cause.

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Originally posted by divisionbyzero:If the temperature rise is inevitable shouldn't we be spending more on mitigation than prevention? Good question.

We shouldn't be spending anything on anything, because there is no indication that there is any correlation at all and that temperatures are at all out of the norm.

Even if you look at the graph above, it clearly shows that temperature increases do not follow CO2 release and that there are many periods where there is no correlation at all. If you look at a graph of increased temperature, and thus increased melt resulting in more CO2 release you will see a correlation. And BTW, you can't measure CO2 levels accurately from Ice because in times of increased temperature the evidence melted so they are not getting the complete picture and extrapolating data using stats which is not science.

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Originally posted by divisionbyzero:I'm all for debating the minutiae of theory and experiment but sometimes you have to sum up what you know in order to turn it into policy.

The problem is that they don't know anything. They are as knowledgable as Moses was during the old testiment. That is to say, completely and utterly ignorant backwards people making guesses based on information taken in a vacuum without knowing it's true causes and thus attributing to a God that which can be easily explained through science and then writting it up as gosiple. Sound familiar? It should cause that's the UN study on climate change in a nutshell.

Man, did every fucking commenter here miss the BIG section in the article about one-way hash arguments?

Every instance of "scientists don't fully understand climate forcings" is exactly that! It's a quick sound byte that can only begin to be adequately refuted with a 6-paragraph explanation.

Of course no one perfectly understands climate, anymore than anyone perfectly knows the details behind gravity. But to truly understand the current debate behind the latter, you'd need 2 years of college-level physics! Sheesh.

Quiz time! This should be obvious but... where would you expect a proper and robust rebuttal of the predominant theory of gravity? Hm? A) a blog by a "skeptical" personality with a background in civil engineering, B) a symposium financed and hosted by a self-proclaimed "anti-gravity" lobbyist group C) a peer-reviewed cosmology journal article with novel telescope data?

If you think those are all equally legitimate, please go soak your head.

I completly agree. I have no idea why some people are so interested in keeping the status quo in regards to CO2 emissions(unless you stand to make money from it). What are they trying to convince us of? That you would rather burn fossil fuels until they are all gone(which causes pollution regardless of what side of the climate change argument you are on) and the world goes through a massive energy crisis? Why not solve the problem now and be finished with it?

So we can either destroy the planet we are living on by raping all its natural resouces and abusing all that it has given us, or we can go back to how it was no earlier than 300 years ago where there wasnt really a river on the planet that coulnt be drunk from. Once we destory nature, the environment and the animals that live in it, they are not comming back. Or are you just trying to prove how selfish you are?

You know, of all the arguments put forth for CO2 regulation, this is one of the more asinine. I'm all for preserving resources wherever possible, and developing clean technologies and energy. But to argue that spending trillions of dollars and dramatically affecting the way of lives of millions of people in developed and undeveloped nations based on the hunch that AGW is a reality is highly irresponsible to say the least.

Originally posted by VIProgrammer:[QUOTE]Or, perhaps they exaggerate to increase funding for their own research. I don't know for sure.

You clearly DON'T know. I've asked repeatedly, in multiple threads, for someone to show a paper trail on JUST HOW science funding organizations like NSF could be politicizing or corrupting climate research. I have yet to see a single "skeptic" account for one penny.

Yeah, you never can tell with those greedy scientist. There are not at all like their angelic lobbyist counterparts who only think about others and how they can best benefit mankind. I mean, screw science, what has it ever done for us? –Sarcasm

Originally posted by VIProgrammer:I tend to approach all issues with a scientific mind-set. However, there are serious questions about global warming that a rational person cannot and should not easily dismiss. I definitely don't believe Al Gore's exaggerated disaster flick. I also am also skeptical about the data and conclusions presented by the IPCC.

WTF does every "skeptic" link Gore's movie to the IPCC report? You guys think that the Gore's movie is the trailer for the report ... or the 'Cliff Notes' version ... have you even read the most recent "physical basis" reports? If not, and you are carrying on this way I find it really disgusting particularly because they are available online for free (as pdfs)

I am particularly concerned about the faith placed in long-term climate change computer models. I don't see any reason to believe that those models are any more reliable than the models used to forecast weather or evaluate risk in financial markets--and those models have proven remarkably unreliable.

Weather models are remarkably reliable, and still getting better.

In terms of the physics in implements, a climate model is a weather model .. the atmospheric physics is the same.

"Climate" models these days tend to be coupled atmosphere/ocean models (although for many diagnostic purposes still run as atmosphere-only with prescribed sea-surface-temperatures ... which is far, far, faster) ... where weather models generally just treat the oceans as fixed.

Climate models tend to be fussier about radiative transport, and to some degree cloud-physics parameterizations, although the trend in weather models is to be equally sophisticated.

Because climate models must be run for very long simulations (sometimes 10's of thousands of years) and/or rerun multiple times with different initial conditions (which is done with weather models too... called "ensemble forecasting") the big thing that is typically degraded in a climate model compared to a weather model is spatial resolution ... and that does matter ... but it is easy to test the consequences ... you run a problem at varying resolutions and see what you see -- it's a control parameter.

One of the dominate climate models these days is also exactly a dominant weather model, the ECMWF model.

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Perhaps some systems are just too complex for reliable modeling.

Perhaps you have no clue what you are talking about and just spewing FUD?

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In the case of global warming, it seems quite clear that at least some of the "experts" have been biased. Perhaps they exaggerate to help convince us of a growing danger. Or, perhaps they exaggerate to increase funding for their own research. I don't know for sure. But I've seen enough discrepancies and read enough serious alternative viewpoints to no longer have confidence that the global warming "experts" A) know what is happening and B) are presenting an unbiased view of the situation.

So if "some" are they all are, but none of the "skeptics" are anything but perfectly informed and oh yeah ... perfectly knowledgeable too ... right?

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I don't know if this "Scopes trial" approach is the best approach, but I do believe that it would be good to have a serious, meaningful discussion of global warming that is based on facts, not hysteria and pre-conceived notions.

The evil here is the use of Statistics instead of real science, but it is absolutely appropriate that this is put on trial (by scientists) and we test this. We're about to destroy 20% of our economy over night and raise huge taxes that didn't previously exist for a statistical model that his highly flawed and incomplete at best, and based on all of the contradictory evidence OUTRIGHT WRONG in all likelihood.

It is time to reopen the debate. Doubters have a reason for doubting, but as it stands right now, there is no serious debate in scientific circles going on and thus we can't possibly come to the truth, because Al Gore made a movie with cartoons of polar bears drowning in it (which isn't true, and the polar bear population is increasing thank you very much! That's why he had to use a cartoon...) everyone turned off their brain. (tip if you watch that movie, every time there is an animation, he's lying)

As for preventing a global catastrophe and the idiotic argument that it doesn't matter if we were the cause, you need to think carefully about that. First there is no evidence that there is anything unusual at all about the temperature changes that we routinely monitor. Second, if there is something happening, us messing around without knowning what's going on is going to make it worse, not better. The assumption that we can fix this without knowing even 5% of what we need to know about the earth's climate is huberous at best, and an ego-maniacle extinction level event most likely.

I implore you: Educate yourselves. Don't take the government's word for it. They're at the least ignorant and most likely wrong. Start asking questions, don't accept this data on faith. Don't take my word for it either, do the research, read the reports, get in the face of the people claiming to be right. Question their motives. (i.e. on of the UN's foremost climatologist admitted that they were exagerating and said that sometimes you have to lie to get people to do the right thing!) Question the "concensus" because it doesn't exist. Stop this madness before we destory our way of lives for NOTHING.

I certainly agree that there is a right to be skeptical but let me ask you some questions:

1) Why do you believe that "REAL SCIENCE" does not involve statistics?

Almost all serious scientific research uses statistics.

2) Why do you think there has not been a debate?

The debate started forty years ago and for a very long time skeptics of AGW had the upper hand. This changed about ten years ago when we had adequate data to start making more definitive judgments rather than purely speculate. This "poor me" victim attitude of AGW skeptics is ridiculously disingenuous.

3) If AGW is pure nonsense what is the motivation of those who propose it?

It's pretty obvious that those who stridently oppose it are in the service of industries that stand to benefit from carbon emissions.

I appreciate your exhortation to skepticism and since none of your counter-points have a shred of scientific validity I think I will embrace that skepticism wholeheartedly when it comes to them.

quote:Originally posted by RedGhost:quote:Originally posted by z0phi3l:There's enough science being ignored to completely debunk AGW, this is why we are being forced into believing that it exists, and why all the proponents of this falsehood refuse to debate it, they can't justify what they claim is happening.

Letting things be, accepting that as we have done nothing, temperatures are actually cooling, is in all honesty the best policy

You do realize that almost none of them have anything to say about anthropogenic climate change right? I'm not sure who looks dumber here, the idiots who maintain the site or the one who copies it on a science and tech site. A science and tech site where someone just might actually critically read the link instead of saying "oh golly gee, a website lists about 10 whole papers, I guess this is all a hoax".

The first 5 papers discuss the role of solar variation in historical climate changes. Everybody realizes this occurs, and they have no bearing on the current debate. This type of arguement does a diservice to actual skepticism and the site maintainers should be ashamed of themselves for perpetuating this crap. The authors of those studies would be ashamed of this use of their work.

The next 2 papers talk about climate models. The first warns about systematic errors in specific types of codes and warns about making too strong of predictions based on them. It has nothing to say about climate change in general and is a critique of a few types of codes.

The second paper in this group points out a fundamental difference in several of the climate models, but goes on to show that this cahnge makes no difference in the final results based on CO2. My guess is that someone misread the last line of the abstract and thought the paper says CO2 doesn't force climate. It actually states that the different assumptions in the compared models do not appreciably change their descriptions of CO2's affects. This paper clearly supports AGW hypotheses. The person who listed this paper as anti-AGW is an imbecile.

Two of the next 4 are statistical analyses that apply to very specific hypothesis tests. Again, not anti AGW, anti making conclusions based on very specific analyses.

The third to last is lock, stock, anti-AGW. Good work, you got one - but it doesn't outweigh the thousands of others that say it is happening, and it has probably been subsequently destroyed.

The last paper is nothing short of batshit insane. They try to use the second law of thermo to disprove the greenhouse effect. It got into an absolute joke of a journal and is well, laughably bad.

So, on a website that purports to have real peer reviewed literature disproving AGW, it has a single legit article that in no way unbalances the thousands of other articles.

Keep trying though, reality isn't on your side, but if you copy and paste that link enough, maybe you'll convince a few more idiots.

Originally posted by Geminiman:The author of this piece really needs to do more research. Ron Paul just submitted a brief to Congress on the issue with 30,000+ names on it, all climatologists and of which 9000+ of those are PhDs in the field and ALL of them say that there is no such thing as global warming caused by man-made increases in C02. These are scientists saying that there is no correlation. (a good chunk of them were actually sighted on the UN study on the subject as supporting global warming despite telling the UN study that they would not sign anything of the sort and a chunk of them are suing the UN for using their names)

Approximately 7,700 atmospheric scientists worked in {} 2002. The federal government was the largest single employer of civilian meteorologists, accounting for about 2,900. The U.S. Department of Defense employed several hundred civilian meteorologists. Others worked for professional, scientific, and technical services firms, including private weather consulting services; radio and television broadcasting; air carriers; and state governments.

Of those about a third have PhDs, and climatology is a small subdiscipline of atmospheric sciences.

Some climatologists do come through other PhD programs, sometimes Geography, Geology, Oceanology ... but increasingly they come from Atmospheric Sciences or combined Earth-science programs.

The US+Canada employs a huge fraction of the world total, probably close to half, with the EU employing most of the rest

The problem is that they don't know anything. They are as knowledgable as Moses was during the old testiment. That is to say, completely and utterly ignorant backwards people making guesses based on information taken in a vacuum without knowing it's true causes and thus attributing to a God that which can be easily explained through science and then writting it up as gosiple. Sound familiar? It should cause that's the UN study on climate change in a nutshell.

Ok, this hyperbole is ridiculous. I'm not sure who made you all-knowing but since you are all-knowing obviously nothing I say will change your mind. Have fun in fantasy land. See my point about "no sane person"...